Lucky Number Seven
by Cyberwraith9
Summary: A simple question of 'Why' sends Ron down memory lane to relive the formation of Team Possible, and at last reveal the one moment that defined a hero.
1. Chapter the First

**Kim Possible  
****Lucky Number Seven**

_by Cyberwraith9_

* * *

"Good morning, and welcome to Cappuccino Chatter," said a sugary sweet blonde from her overstuffed armchair. Her face split into a wide grin for the trio of cameras angled at her face, and bore the plastic sheen of one face lift too many in the fight against the ravages of natural aging. "I'm Sunni Sheridan, and with me this morning is our first guest, a globetrotting adventurer who has literally saved the world dozens of times, all before her eighteenth birthday. Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Kimberly Possible." 

The redheaded hero in question sat opposite her host on an identical chair, placed on-set and on-camera before an audience of millions. She glowed beneath the hot studio lights, wearing her mission togs and a smile as genuine as Sunni's was Hollywood. A bay window behind the two women offered them and their audience (studio or television) a street level view of New York City. Or it would have, if row upon row of New Yorkers hadn't gathered outside the window with tag board signs and cheers of admiration for the sensational teen wonder.

She thanked the pink-suited woman and said, "Please, just Kim." The audience's crazed roar drew her smile tight as she answered them with a nod. Once the throng quieted again, she added, "And it's a real honor to be here. I'm a big fan."

The line, fed to Kim by the show's producer, made the smile on Sunni's face spread even farther. Kim couldn't help but wonder how much strain the host's surgically elevated cheekbones could bear before they would split and explode on live television. At least then, she wouldn't be bored anymore.

"Well, I'm afraid the reverse is true, young lady," Sunni said, piercing Kim's veil of tedium. "You're out there, mixing it up, taking it to the edge, pushing the envelope…" She threw a few playful jabs in the air, stirring a chuckle from the crowd. "You're an inspiration to women everywhere, Kim."

"No big," Kim said.

"Very big," countered Sunni, leaning forward. "You just saved the world from an army of killer taco robots. You might even say, 'Muy Grande,' eh?"

Kim waited out the courtesy chuckle coming from Sunni's audience, and pointedly did not share in it. After, she said, "I'm just an ordinary girl trying to help out, Sunni. I do my best, and I do what I can."

"How do you like that, folks? She's all that, and humble, too." Sunni stood up, and waved for the crowd to join her. "Let's show her some love, people!"

The entire studio rose to their feet in standing ovation, pounding hands together and tossing whistled as the red-faced, redheaded hero…all but one. That one person lurked around a snack table off-set with a bitter look of disbelief on his face. A speckled bun capped in white sat atop his palm.

"Show her some love," he said with a sneer. "You call this love? I call it yesterday's stale bagels." He sniffed at the white goop sitting on the bagel's sliced crown. "And this is schmear? This is spackle." He looked down at his pink rodent companion, who rooted through the generous fruit platter set out for Kim Possible's landmark interview. "This is spackle masquerading as schmear," Ron Stoppable told his little buddy.

Rufus poked his head out of a gutted pineapple and moaned through h cheeks stuffed to the rim with free food. "Mwoah-ho-ho, nachos?"

He shook his head. "No," he groused, "There's no nacho platter, no sidekick dressing room, or any of the other things I asked for." Ron folded his arms and leaned against the table, unwittingly sitting on the edge of a carrot cake. "Same old story," he said. "Save the world a dozen times, and you still don't get any decent grub."

"You didn't save the world," a gruff voice told Ron from the other end of the refreshments table. Looking over, Ron caught sight of a greasy T-shirt wrapped around flabby muscle picking at the food on the table. The T-shirt sported a head with a face that looked well-versed in expressing irritation. A practiced look of just that shot Ron's way just then, parting briefly to inhale a muffin. "Kim Possible saved the world," the man mumbled, spraying chunks of muffin at Ron as he did.

Ron exchanged glances with Rufus. "Are you serious?" asked Ron. "You've heard of Team Possible, right? Saved the world from the giant Li'l Diablos? Any of this a'ringin' a bell?" With a small flourish, Ron posed and announced, "Well, I'm the other half of the team." Rufus leapt up onto Ron's shoulder and tooted a 'Ta-da!'

The greasy man rubbed at his day-old stubble as he examined this boastful boy. "You do dress like her," he admitted, eyeballing Ron's mission clothes. "You some kinda groupie, 'r something? Part of a fan club?"

"Aw, c'mon!" Ron dropped his arms, deflating in spirit as well as in stature. "Ron. Ron Stoppable." The blank look on the large man's face persisted. "Sidekick extraordinaire, with a PhD in Distraction.

"Nope." He shook his head. "Never heard of…wait." A hard examination sent the man's eyes scouring across the scowling lines of Ron's face, and culminated in a snap of the his meaty fingers. "Ain't you the guy Kim Possible always saves? You're the guy who keeps losing his pants, ain't ya?"

A belabored groan tumbled from Ron's mouth as he dropped back against the table. Rufus echoed his groan and tilted into a pratfall off of Ron's shoulders, landing atop a lime gelatin with a bounce.

"Typical," said Ron. "You save the day again and again, and nobody knows your name. Lose your pants one or two…dozen times," he added in a cough, then continued, "And people never let you forget about it." He poured himself a plastic cup of punch to quell the indignation raging in his belly.

The greasy man wiped his hand on his jeans and then offered it to Ron. "If you run with the Possible kid, you're okay in my book. Name's Cooper. I'm a grip for the studio."

Ron took Cooper's hand after some hesitation. True to his profession's moniker, Cooper had quite the impressive handshake. "A grip, huh? It's gotta beat being the guy who has to move stuff on the set between shows." With a laugh, Ron said, "That's gotta be—"

"That's what a grip does."

"—one of the most noble professions of them all." Ron finished without missing a beat. The ironclad grasp around his fingers remained. "Heh. There now. That wasn't awkward in the least."

Cooper relinquished Ron's hand with a forgiving smile. "Very smooth, kid." He snatched the bagel from Ron's palm and took a bite, chewing the stale bread noisily and turning back to the friendly banter bouncing between the two televised women. Kim's irresistible smile, however uncomfortable, drew his eyes in and held them captivated. "So why ain't you up there, 'f you and Possible are so buddy-buddy?"

Ron glanced at the interview and repressed a tiny pang of envy. "Eh," he said with a shrug. "Fame and glory's not really my bag. Besides, the producer said I was too bourgeoisie for television." The memory of the producer's offhand comment, and Kim's resultant anger, resurfaced in his mind. It had taken a full minute for Ron to calm Kim down, and five more to convince her to do the interview without him. With a quizzical frown, Ron said, "I think that means 'handsome' in Norwegian."

The two of them lapsed into silence, entranced by Kim's voice as she regaled Sunni Sheridan and her audience with the tale of Drakken's diabolical Diablo drones, and her dynamic defeat of the dastardly despot. Throughout the story, she cast warm glances off-camera to a freckled face, which nodded approvingly at key junctures in the tale. A collective chuckle rolled through the audience when Kim reached the part about rescuing her father from the clutches of Drakken's mutated squid. Even downplayed by Kim's diplomacy and omissions, Ron's performance did not inspire awe. It did, however, inspire a rather biting comment from Sunni, one that dropped Kim's polite smile like the portcullis of a castle.

"No, Sunni," said Kim betwixt clenched teeth, "I wouldn't call Ron's fight with the squid a 'calamarity.'" She turned to the crowd with a scornful tone that made the show's producer scowl, and cast her fearsome gaze across an audience that still laughed behind its hands. "Just in case none of you have ever tried it, fighting any kind of giant sea creature is no walk in the park."

"So you've fought more than just squids, then," Sunni supplied.

Hesitant to relinquish her ire, Kim answered, "Well, sure. Sharks, eels, manta rays, piranhas…one time, even a dolphin."

"It's true," Ron muttered sidelong to Cooper. "He was one uppity aquatic mammal." Rufus nodded and chattered in agreement.

"I see," Sunni said, oblivious to Ron's recollections. "But Ron, he helped you in those fights. He helps you in all your battles?" A smug look molded her plastic face, and returned the confidence to her producer's off-camera face.

Kim looked away and rubbed the back of her neck. Her gaze flicked toward Ron, but ricocheted away at the last moment, unable to look at him for fear of cracking her forceful façade. "Well," she said, shifting with discomfort, "Ron helps out in a lot of different ways. I could never save the world without him."

"Of course he does," cooed Sunni. She leaned toward the cameras and the audience beyond. "But I think we all know what really fuels the Team Possible machine." Pumping her fist, she shouted, "A whole lotta girl power, am I right?"

Cheers and applause thundered through the studio, drowning out Kim's weak protests. Even if he was the butt of the joke, Ron still felt badly for Kim; 'She can disarm a nuke blindfolded in the middle of a firefight,' mused Ron as he sipped his punch, 'But the girl still can't deal with the media to save her life.'

As the frenzy died down, Cooper looked over at the sidelines sidekick in question. The blasé serenity painted across his freckles stirred within Cooper his oft-ignored curiosity. It wormed its way into his mind and refused to leave in the wake of Ron's public humiliation. "Hey, kid, lemmie ax you something."

Ron shrugged. "Nah, that's okay. I'm not that mad at Sunni."

"No, not that." Cooper looked him up and down, from his wobbly ankles to his noodle arms, to his fallow skin and the uncontrollable clump of straw nesting atop his head. Juxtaposed with the living dynamo on the stage, one could hardly believe him capable of withstanding a strong breeze, much less globetrotting and adventuring. "Why'd you get into this kinda thing? No offense," he said with a laugh, "But you don't exactly seem like the hero type."

Ron sniggered into his punch. He exchanged pointed glances with Rufus, who joined him in a guilty little chuckle amidst Cooper's confusion. "You're not wrong," admitted Ron. He set his punch aside and traded it for a naked mole rat, which he placed atop his shoulder once again. "We've been at it for so long, sometimes I forget why we do this stuff."

His pink passenger snorted, folding his claws together. "Nu-uh," he said chidingly.

"Yeah, you're right," said Ron. He poked Rufus in the belly, transforming the rat's whiskered frown into chittering giggles. "It just seemed like the thing to say." Cooper's quizzical gaze became expectant, drawing Ron's eyebrow up. He shot a sidelong glance at Kim, then back over to his own interview. "Really? It's kind of a long story, and it's not really interesting unless…" He frowned. "Well, unless you're me, really."

With a glance back at the show in progress, Cooper shrugged. "Set won't need to be changed for a while. And Sunni's gonna keep your boss there gabbing for a good long while. So why not?"

Ron looked uncertain for a moment, but the genuine intrigue written in Cooper's expression loosened Ron's lips into a grin. "Gather 'round, my teamster pal," he said, throwing an arm over Cooper's shoulders, "And I'll regale you with a tale of heroics and heart."

"Don't touch me."

* * *

_Sorry. Now, our story begins late in the dark, long-ago decade of the Nineties. The grunge rock craze had once again been contained in Seattle, where it belonged. People were giving in to unfounded panic at the coming of the new millennium and its three terrible zeroes, all the while unaware of the threat carbs represented to the American way of life. And a young, strapping boy filled with promise and cheap Mexican food had just celebrated his Bar Mitzvah, thus becoming a man of action._

The sleepy, suburban streets of Middleton basked in a seasonable and sunny serenity. Breezes brushed past budding blossoms, infusing the wind with a sweet scent that tickled many a nose and turned hay fevers everywhere into rampaging beasts. But such was not the concern of the moment, as the case would normally be in Middleton. Instead, its habitual boredom gave way beneath the onslaught of police sirens as a caravan of squad cars barreled through the road. A smaller, slower vehicle trailed in their wake, unnoticed; a bike, trembling beneath a double-payload of two teens traveling at unsafe velocities that still could not match their guides'.

_Kim and I had been goofing off at the park. Y'know, normal kid stuff. But when we saw a small fleet of police charging to the rescue, I knew we had to check it out. Even then, the whole hero thing was in my blood. Like destiny. And no man, not even Ron Stoppable, can defy his own destiny._

"Kim!" Ronnie Stoppable squeezed his eyes shut and buried his nose into the back of Kimmie Possible's shoulder as she leapt her bicycle over the lip of a hill overlooking Middleton's downtown district. If his eyes had been open, he could have seen the trail of patrol cars screaming down the road below them. Instead, the only thing he saw whenever a nasty bump jarred his eyes back open was the golden summer tan lurking outside the straps of Kimmie's lime tank top. "Are you trying to kill us?"

"Chill out," Kimmie called back, rolling her eyes up toward her helmet. They soared down the steep hill and breakneck speeds that fluttered her ponytail past Ronnie's trembling head. "We're fine."

A shrill scream disagreed with Kimmie from the back of Ronnie's throat as she leapt their ride over a curb and onto the sidewalk. "There are better ways to kill us," he wailed. "Faster ways. Easier ways. Ways that don't involve me losing my skin to eighty yards of—Waugh!" His whining descended back into pitiful yelps as Kimmie began zigzagging between pedestrians, nearly jerking him out of his seat.

"We did what you wanted," shot Kimmie. "Now we're gonna do what I want." A motorcade of flashing lights pooled ahead of them outside of the Middleton City Bank. The red and blue strobes drew Kimmie in like an exuberant moth to the flame. "And I want to see what all the commotion is about."

"But what I wanted to do was fun."

Kimmie began pumping the bike's brakes in staccato bursts. "I watched you chase ducks around a pond," she said, and added as a rueful afterthought, "For an hour."

"Yeah," countered Ronnie, easing his grip as they slowed to safer speeds. "But ducks can't hurt you…much." His hand found its way to his backside, gingerly testing the patch of skin still sore beneath his jeans. "Who knew denim is no match for duck bills, huh?"

She didn't answer, and instead swung the bike around before they hit the patrol cars perimetered around the bank's marble steps. Policemen streamed into the building between its towering ivory pillars, weapons drawn and ready for whatever trouble that had beckoned them to the scene. Kimmie's chest swelled with excitement at their precision, their discipline, their caution and simultaneous fearlessness in the face of unknown danger.

A familiar face emerged from a nearby patrol car, bidding Kimmie to stop and dismount her bike with a hop. Poor Ronnie wasn't prepared, and wound up on his bottom with a _whuff_ as he cleared the bike's seat. Kimmie paid him no mind, and strode forward with a cute, calculated smile on her face. "Sergeant Preston," she called out. "Sergeant Preston!"

The round face seated atop a rotund body lit up at the sight of the teens. "Well, as I live and breathe," he began, before a wall of solid muscle appeared from nowhere to block Kimmie from his sight.

She bounced off of uniformed abs, shook her head clear, and gazed up at a shaven, square-jawed glare that could melt dry ice. "Unauthorized minor," the beefy cop rumbled down, "I cannot have you violating the perimeter of a crime scene. Please return to your home, or be prepared to face Obstruction of Justice charges."

Kimmie's smile bottomed out as the behemoth leaned in and placed a meaty hand on his nightstick. The cop's mood darkened further when Ronnie wandered up behind Kimmie, brushing his butt clean. "Next time, warn me before you Evil Knievel your way through—" He bumped into Kimmie, and followed her gaze up the three stories to the stern look of disapproval looming over them. "Whoa. Who's your new skyscraper friend?"

The huge cop's grimace zeroed in on Ronnie in an instant. "Son, do you know what pepper spray is?"

Ronnie swallowed. "Right now, I'm hoping it's like 'I Can't Believe It's Not Butter' spray, sir."

"Barkin, stand down!" Preston marched up and shoved the large cop aside. "I know these kids. They're hardly a threat."

"I don't know," the man called Barkin said. He eyeballed Ronnie with a snort. "This one rubs me the wrong way." Getting right up in Ronnie's face, he rasped, "He's trouble."

The blond squinted at Barkin, emboldened by the save by Preston. "You're like a borderline case that hopped the border," he decided. Then he sniffed at Barkin's lingering threats. "But your breath is minty fresh. Kudos." A growl from Barkin chased Ronnie into hiding behind Kimmie, where he whimpered in renewed cowardice.

Preston rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed. "Barkin, by all reports, the suspect is long gone. Go secure the bank lobby, and leave these kids alone." He gathered the tens by his side and kept a stern look on the rookie until Barkin had grumbled his way past the yellow tape line. "Sorry about that," apologized Preston. "Barkin's new to the force…and ex-military." With one last sigh, he banished his own woes from his face, replacing it with a bright smile to offer to the teens. "So, how is Middleton's finest vigilante duo doing today?"

"Hi, Sergeant," said Kimmie, adding a girlish giggle that made Preston melt. Just as soon as she knew she had him, her smile faded to make way for what Ronnie had dubbed her 'Mission Mode.' "What's the situation here?"

The seasoned sergeant gave Kimie and her reluctant entourage a wry look. "Well, normally," he said, and hefted his equipment belt up in a self-important gesture, "Normally, we let middle schoolers find out about robberies on the evening news. But seeing as how you single-handedly stopped the last bank robbery…"

Kimmie's smile returned long enough to dole out some modesty. "No big," she assured him. "Mom was there cashing a check, and…well, you know the rest." She blinked luminously, and cocked her head at an adorable angle.

Nobody's fool, Preston knew he was being manipulated by Kimmie's dewy eyes. He also knew when he was out-maneuvered and out-gunned. His defeated smile helped usher the teens toward the crime scene. With no foreseeable danger, he could afford to bend the rules for a couple of good apples. "I suppose it wouldn't hurt to give the future of law enforcement a little peek." Now he leaned in, giving them a hard eye. "But stay close, and don't touch anything."

"Yes sir," Ronnie harmonized with Kimmie, and then grumbled under his breath, "You eat one piece of evidence, and you never hear the end of it."

Together, they entered the bank. Kimmie did her best to curb her excitement and act serious in the hive of activity, but she couldn't keep all the wonder out of her beaming face. Ronnie did his best to curb his obvious boredom. Keeping his mouth shut became easier once he caught sight of Officer Barkin's evil eye from the corner of the room.

Middleton City Bank's sprawling lobby was a shadow of its former self. Its polished floors sported a fresh carpet of scattered shattered glass from the skylight, which even an amateur like Kimmie could tell had been the point of entry. The lacquered oak partition separating the lobby from the service area behind the counter lay in splinters. But most impossible of all, and what dropped Kimmie's and Ronnie's jaws, was the gaping hole in the wall where the bank's walk-in vault had been.

"Darndest thing," grunted Preston. He lifted the bill of his cap to scratch his brow as they gaped at the gutted gap. "Witnesses say some costumed nut busted in through the ceiling and used some kind of ray gun to rip the bank vault right out of the wall. Then he flew back out without as much as a how-do-you-do."

A great furrow of torn tile rested in the polished tile floor. It stretched from the vault's former resting place, through the wreck of a partition, all the way over to beneath the skylight. Kimmie leaned on her tiptoes, trying to get a better view of the vault's void, while Ronnie whistled appreciatively. "Costumes?" the teen asked. "Comic books are coming to life now?"

"Don't know, m'lad," said Preston. "But I do know trouble when I see it. And I have never seen any kind of trouble like this before." They stared at the open space, wondering how anyone could lift untold tons of steel through a wall and into the air, only to disappear without a trace. "I'll tell you kids one thing," Preston said. "I can't imagine anyone tough enough to take on somebody who can lift a bank vault like that."

Ronnie Stoppable's stomach plummeted as he watched his best friend's face transform into absolute, adolescent seriousness at the utterance of Preston's ominous words.

* * *

_With the mission to end all missions dropped into her thirteen-year-old lap, I knew there would be no stopping Kim. It didn't matter that she knew nothing about the case, the suspect, and she refused to acknowledge the fact that this guy could lift large portions of a metropolitan bank, whereas she could not. Still, if Kim was set on a goal, I would be right there to help her._

"Who's a little mole rat? Who's a chunky, cheesy little mole rat?" cooed Ronnie as he tickled Rufus' tiny pot belly. The two of them giggled together, sprawled out across Kim's bedspread. The weighty legacy of Missus Doctor Possible's ravioli casserole sat in their stomachs, encouraging them to lay spread-eagle and bask in its consumed glory.

Seated at her desk, Kimmie shot the duo an irritated glare. "Will you two keep it down," she snapped. "I'm trying to concentrate." She swiveled back to her computer and began the dialup process. Hideous screeches clawed at her ears and her patience, signaling her modem's activation. "And keep him off of m bed, Ron," she added, giving a muttered, 'gross,' under her breath for good measure.

Ronnie scooped up his mournfully moaning mole rat and deposited him into his shirt pocket, where Rufus could at least see the action. "You just don't like Rufus because he's bald," shot Ronnie. To this, Rufus added a 'yeah!' "Y'know, my dad is bald. I might be too, someday. S'that mean you're gonna not like me?" He placed his hands on his hips, a gesture which Rufus mirrored from Ronnie's shirt front.

"I have bigger things to worry about than the emotional needs of your freaky new pet, Ron," said Kimmie. Her fingers hunted and pecked their way into an online search engine. "In case you don't remember, we have a mission."

"What, the bank thing?" Incredulity flooded Ronnie's tone. "Don't you think that sort of thing should be left to trained professionals, and not untrained…un-professionals?"

Kimmie whirled about in her chair. Defiant indignation burned bold and green in her eyes. "Meaning what?" she demanded.

He shrank at her challenging tone. "Meaning, uh…Well, look," he said. "I know we helped out with the other bank robbery…and those muggers…" Ronnie began ticking his fingers off: "The fire at Mister Milton's shop, the kid lost in the park, the runaway Ferris wheel and that rich dude's odd and slightly disturbing collection of plush." Glancing at his fingers, he couldn't help but pause in reflection of her accomplishments. But the moment was brief. "But this 'mission' fad is getting kind of passé, don't you think?" Excitement drew his eyes wide open and rounded his lips for an, "Ooh, ooh! I know; let's bring the giga pet craze back! What do you say?"

An arched eyebrow bore upon him in silent reply until he dropped his arms and silenced his misplaced enthusiasm. "Helping people isn't a fad, Ron," Kimmie said. She turned back to her computer and continued the painstaking process of typing in parameters for a web search. "That money belongs to a lot of people who need it."

"But what can we do?" asked Ronnie.

"I don't know," Kimmie admitted. "Something. Anything." With a pointed look back, she told him, "But not nothing. As long as you try, you can do anything."

_"And that's where I come in."_

Both Kimmie and Ronnie froze in mid-argument, and turned toward the voice addressing them. The windowed face of her computer idled back. "KP," whispered Ronnie, "Did your computer just talk?"

"I…I think so," Kim whispered back.

"Maybe it's that Y2K thing," Ronnie mused.

He leapt back with a shriek when the computer answered back, _"Not exactly, Mister Stoppable. I'm using Miss Possible's computer to contact you both. I've hacked in through its connection, and now I'm just using its speakers and microphone to talk to you. Pretty sweet, huh?"_ the voice added smugly.

Kimmie's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Who are you?" she demanded of their faceless, absent intruder.

_"Turn your web cam on,"_ instructed the voice. Kimmie reached up and reluctantly complied, against the muttered and fearful wishes of Ronnie and Rufus, switching on her spherical camera seated atop the monitor. The instant she did so, a gasp whistled through the computer's speakers_. "Oh my gosh," _gushed the voice,_ "It's really you! You're really her! I mean,"_ amended the flustered voice, _"You're Kim Possible!"_

"We know who she is," said Ronnie. "Now tell us who you are, Mister Computer Man, or I'm pulling the plug." He leaned in and flicked the screen for emphasis, prompting a roll of Kimmie's eyes.

_"Oh, right. Sorry. Hold on."_ A second later, a new window opened on the computer's desktop of its own volition, carrying with it the second sight to drop Kimmie and Ronnie's jaws that day. _"My name is Wade,"_ said the little boy on the opposite end of the connection. _"I'm here to help you guys out."_

Ronnie exchanged a glance with Kimmie, then with Rufus, before returning his disbelieving eyes to the round face smiling at them from the computer. "Help? Dude, you're some AWOL from the Teletubby Brigade. I don't think we need any juice boxes to stop some super-powered bank robbers, thanks."

An indignant look soured Wade's sweet smile. _"I've got PhDs in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, and Interior Design."_ At the last one, and the teens' quizzical looks, he said, _"I had some extra time between classes. And I also know,"_ he added with a glare at Ron, _"That the guy you're looking for isn't super-powerful. But he is smart, and he's dangerous. And I want to help you bring him down."_

"Why me?" Kimmie nudged aside her flattered ego for the moment. "If you know so much, why not go to the police?"

Wade's expression became sheepish. _"Turns out the police aren't so hot to take advice from an eight-year-old genius,"_ he confessed. Brightening, he said, _"But with my help, I bet you'll catch this guy easy. You can do anything!"_

"Kim, I don't know about this," Ronnie said.

_"I've seen your website,"_ Wade told Kimmie. _"I see what you do for people here in Middleton on the news. You help people. Well,"_ he said with a sweep of his arms, _"I want to help people, too. I'm really smart, and I want to be part of your team."_

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," barked Ronnie, shoving Kimmie aside to dominate the camera's field. "The position of plucky sidekick has already been filled, Mon Ami, so you can just take your extremely well-versed knowledge of everything and hightail it on outta here!"

Kimmie cocked a brow. "Plucky?"

"Besides," continued Ronnie, "We're not sure if we're really all that interested in this whole crime-fighting gig." He folded his arms and harrumphed, hoisting his nose into the air. "If you must know, we were in the middle of talks to quit the whole deal when you oh-so-rudely interrupted."

_"Please, Miss Possible…"_ pleaded Wade. _"I don't know if the police will find this guy. I don't know if they can take him down…But I do know that we can do some real good if we work together."_

Kimmie sat in quiet contemplation of the face in her computer. Her fingers steepled in front of her, resting at the tip of her nose. Ronnie hung at her shoulder with bated breath, hoping, praying that his best friend would come to her senses. They were middle schoolers. Theirs was a simple lot in life: hang out, eat junk food, skip homework, and drive their parents to the brink of insanity. Why would anyone want to give that up to fight someone who could bench press a bank vault?

"Wade," said Kimmie, "Tell me everything you know. We've got a bad guy to stop." Her eyes fixed intently on the screen as Wade began typing on his own keyboard. She missed the brief, crushed look on Ronnie's face.

_"Then I'm on the team?"_ asked Wade as information began cropping up on Kimmie's monitor.

She smiled. "Let's call this a trial run," she told him. "The first rule we'll lay down is, you gotta call me 'Kim,' understand?" The grin on his face said all she needed to know. "Next, you tell me everything you've got on this guy."

_"You'll need a name to start with,"_ Wade said. "_The guy calls himself 'Colonel Calamitous.'"_

_I didn't know it at the time, but that was the exact moment everything changed. Up until then, Kim had just been a good Samaritan, helping out wherever she found trouble. Now she would start looking for it. And brother, did she ever find it…_

* * *

"So, that's the story?" Cooper asked between sips from a Styrofoam cup of coffee. "You got into this hero thing to hang out with your best friend?" 

Ron shook his head. ""Sort of, but not exactly." His gaze wandered back to Kim, who forced a pretty smiled for the camera as Sunni announced their first commercial break. "That's how it started. But I never would have stuck with it, especially not after what came next."

"Why? What happened next?" asked Cooper.

"We'll be right back," Sunni assured her viewers, "After these messages."


	2. Chapter the Second

**Kim Possible  
****Lucky Number Seven**

_by Cyberwraith9_

* * *

"So Kim," said Sunni, sliding her guest a sly smile, "Let's talk about your life outside of heroics. What do you like to do when you're not sticking it to the bad guys?" 

Kim tilted back in her armchair, relaxing the silicon smile on her face. After the brief hiccup explaining Ron's place on the team, she was glad to move to a different topic. "For me," she explained, "It's all about staying active: snowboarding, skydiving, extreme sports…I guess the things I love to do are the things that help me on missions, too. It's one of the big plusses of the job," she decided.

"Mmm, interesting," Sunni said dismissively. Mischief replaced the brief boredom on her taut face. "She leaned in and said, "Tell us about your love life."

"My what-what?" The teen rocked back. Scarlet seeped into her cheeks as they dropped her smile clean off her face. A nonsensical string of babbles flapped her jaw in a manner quite unbecoming of a world hero, and earned several chuckles and catcalls from the studio audience. "Oh, I…ahh…ooh, that…"

A giggle from her host intensified Kim's embarrassment. Sunni held her hands up to quell the audience's laughter, and then waited with cheshire patience for Kim to collect herself. "A gorgeous girl like you can't possibly be a wallflower, Kimmie. You must have a trail of broken hearts lined up outside your door."

"I don't…'trail' is a bit of an exaggeration," hawed Kim as she stared at the ground, beet-faced. Then her eyes snapped back over to Sunni. "Broken?" she squeaked.

A screen trundled down above their heads, coming aglow with a square patch of light from some hidden projector. "We've got a special treat for you all today," pledged Sunni. "Hank, can we get the picture on the screen? And switch the feed so they can see it at home."

If a few words were enough to embarrass Kim, what came next mortified her beyond all capacity to cope. There on the screen, two faces grinned at the nation's breakfast community, wearing their formal best and arm in arm. They stood motionless in front of the Possibles' front door, smiling at the command of Mister Possible behind the camera. Kim recognized the picture an instant before the audience began to 'aww.' She sank deeper into her armchair, wishing that it could swallow her whole.

"What do we have here?" said Sunni, as Kim turtled her red face into her hands. In the meantime, her prom photo continued to delight her host. "Doesn't she look just darling, folks? A big thanks to Kimmie's parents for providing the photo."

Kim knew her mother would never do anything so embarrassing to her. 'I'm going to kill my father,' she vowed in her head.

"This is your picture from just last week, right? Big Prom Night. And who is that tasty hunk?" Sunni waggled her brows. "If I was just a couple of years younger—"

"—you'd be dating a pile of green slime," snapped Kim. She emerged with testy tones on hand to end Sunni's gushing. "That would be Syntho-Drone Number Nine-Oh-One. He called himself 'Eric.'" The name brought to Kim's mind the gruesome details she had omitted from her on-air retelling, and left a concurrent grimace on her face. "He was a plot by Drakken to keep me busy. He wasn't real, and wound up being a major pain."

The comment cut Sunni short. "Oh," she murmured. Glancing back up at the handsome fellow at vintage Prom Kim's side, she said, "He was cute though, right?" Kim's snort answered that. Floundering, Sunni continued, "So then I guess that means you're single. Good news for all the fellahs out there. Am I right?"

Sunni's cheap tactic worked like a charm, and got the crowd cheering again. Kim had to admire the TV personality's ability to keep control of her crowd. But she wouldn't let Sunni catch her off-guard again. "As a matter of fact," she replied coolly, "I did just start seeing a really great guy." She cast a warm and fuzzy look off the set. Its recipient returned it in kind, adding a wink of his earthy eye.

As another 'aw' rose from the audience, a different entourage standing off-camera turned their gazes between the two teens' tender gaze. Since the inception of Ron's tale, several other behind-the-scenes stagehands had gathered to listen. Gaffers, grips, boom operators, personal assistants, all milled around the snack setup to hear the sidekick speak.

But Ron hadn't lost his original audience, either. "Now I get it." Cooper said, and waggled his coffee cup at Ron. An expression of supreme satisfaction sat on his jowls. "You stayed with her 'cause you were sweet on her. Ha!" The revelation spread a smug smile across his lips before they broke to engulf an entire muffin from the refreshments table.

Ron dropped his wink and pointedly ignored the gagging noises coming from the mole rat in his pocket. A flick of his finger silenced Rufus' dramatic editorial of his and Kim's goo-goo eyes. "Are you kidding me?" he said to Cooper. "By thirteen, I was still half-convinced that girls carried that horrible scourge called cooties."

The small crowd tightened their circle around Ron and Cooper as they sensed his story's reanimation approaching. "Okay, I give, kid. I don't get it," said Cooper.

* * *

_To be honest, neither did I. Seriously, I wasn't so hot to trot after Colonel Calamitous before Wade showed up. I sure as heckfire wasn't thrilled when the little genius started doing that thing where he tells us just how screwed we are._

_"Colonel Calamitous,"_ Wade stated from the tiny screen of a small, sapphire computer, _"Is a brutal, insane, vicious international murderer. He used to be a weapons' designer, until he went out of his gourd and started terrorizing anyone and everyone he could find. The good news is, he's not an actual colonel. As near as I can figure, he's never been affiliated with any military forces. He just likes the alliteration,"_ whispered Wade with a wink.

"Oh joy," deadpanned Kimmie. The two teens loitered in the smelliest, darkest, scariest alley they never knew existed in Middleton. The strange device transmitting Wade's image sat in Kimmie's palm. Fear lurked all around them in the alley's shadows. Its claws sand deep into Ronnie's blanched skin. Even courageous Kimmie felt it breathing down her neck. But she did her best to control her voice as she said, "If he's so bad, what's he doing in Middleton?"

_"Dunno,"_ said Wade. _"But I do know that he's been collecting a lot of cash for something. I've found his electronic fingerprints all over a bunch of hush-hush purchases in the last few weeks. Serious hardware. We're talking end-of-the-world kind of equipment."_

Ronnie cowered at Kimmie's side. His white-knuckled grip on the satchel slung over his shoulder tightened as an alley cat knocked over a garbage can in its search for dinner. "Two questions," he said between panicked moans and looks over his shoulder. "First, how does a kid living inside of Kim's new Palm Pilot know so much about super villains?"

_"I read comic books,"_ Wade shrugged. _"And what you're holding makes the Palm Pilot look like a Commodore Sixty-Four."_

"What's a Commodore Sixty-Four?" asked Ronnie.

Kimmie turned the device over, eliciting a 'Hey' from Wade as his camera picture went wonky. "It's like some kind of communicator," she said.

Once his view of Kimmie had been righted, Wade said, _"Not just a communicator. It's a Kimmunicator. Extra special, just for you."_

"I see." Ronnie hefted his satchel again. The rest of the equipment Wade had provided them with jostled inside at his touch. "And where's my name-themed stuff?"

"Ye-ah, I'll get right on that. Was that your second question?"

"No. My second question is," said Ronnie, waving his arms to highlight the alley, "Why do you have us hanging out in the dead center of Scaryville in the middle of the night? My parents would totally freak if they knew I had snuck out for this!"

_"Looks across the street."_

At Wade's instruction, Kimmie and Ronnie turned their collective gaze down and out of the tier darkened alcove. A long row of slummy buildings squatted on the opposite side of the streets. The wrecks looked old enough to have been condemned by their great-grandparents, and hadn't a single unbroken window between the lot of them to speak of. Humanity's castaways gathered beneath those streetlamps still functioning on the block. Some moved as Ronnie did, casting frightened looks about as they walked the length of the strip. Others held hunters' eyes beneath their scowls, content to lean against dilapidated walls and wait until the right prey came along.

Ronnie shook his head, stumbling back from the distant block. "Oh, no freakin' way," he uttered. "Not gonna happen."

A soft, slender hand clasped his shoulder to head off his instincts to bolt. "Ron, please," Kimmie pleaded. "I'm scared too."

"Oh, we are way past scared," Ronnie assured her with a gulp. "Welcome to full-out terror. Now boarding First Class passengers for freaking out."

As his bounding eyes circled the alley, looking for the fastest, safest exit, they happened upon a trembling lower lip balconied beneath the largest eyes he had ever seen. "I know you don't want to be here," Kimmie told him through her pout. Her hand slid down his arm, and grasped his fingers in hers. "But this is important, and I can't do this alone. Once we do this, we'll go home. I promise. Please?" Impossibly long lashes fluttered across lustrous green gems, beseeching him with a power his budding hormones had no defense for.

"I…we… Crud. Fine."

Kimmie beamed. "Thank you, Ron."

He jabbed a finger at her. "But you never get to use that pouting thing on me again, understand?"

"Deal." Then Kimmie's smile dropped. Looking down at her Kimmunicator, she asked, "So, what exactly are we supposed to do?"

"See the center building?" They did; a darkened, one-story shanty sat wedged between two taller buildings, with steel shutters where its windows used to be, and a door that would have looked more at home on the exterior of a bomb shelter. Glowing neon letters clung to the boxy building's chipped paint, spelling out, 'J E'S BA .'

Kimmie squinted through the pitch alley. "A bar?"

Wade's fingers hammered out a clacking symphony on his keyboard. _"Not just any bar,"_ he said_. "That's Joe's. Meanest bar in Middleton."_

"And we want to go there, why?" snarked Ronnie.

_"To find this guy."_ Wade vanished from the screen. A mug shot took his place, giving the teens a face and profile of someone they didn't recognize, and were very glad for it. Deep wrinkles piled atop the photographed man's scowl, and wrapped around the sneer of his lips. An eye patch broke the symmetry of his face. Though alone, his remaining eye burned with hatred enough for two, and sent shivers down Ronnie's spine. _"His name is Patch Adams."_

"Like the doctor?" Kimmie asked.

The notion made Wade fidget in his chair. _"He's more like the opposite of a doctor,"_ he said slowly.

"Meaning he sees you right away and keeps current magazines?" crowed Ronnie with a smirk. "Ba-dum chhh!"

_"Meaning, don't get him angry,"_ warned Wade. _"My sources say he's Calamitous' top stooge, and he likes to hang out at Joe's."_

Kimmie caught on. Her Mission Mode face cropped up again, sobering Ronnie's defensive humor. "So you want us to get in there and pump him for information," she revealed with a prideful puff of her chest.

Their youthful, genius benefactor's image returned to the screen and nodded. _"Bingo. Word is, he gets chatty after he's had a few. If you're careful, you should be able to get something out of him."_

"Like what this Calamitous guy is plotting." Kimmie gave their new friend a grin. "You rock, Wade."

"Just one thing," Ronnie interjected. He leaned into the Kimmunicator's camera field and waved his hand, first up and down his own pubescent physique, then across Kimmie's. "We're a couple of kids! There's no way we could get into a friendly bar, let alone a secret watering hole for deranged killers and tax evaders."

Wade's smile came too quickly, as though it had sat in waiting for that very problem to arise. _"Check your bag,"_ he told Ronnie. _"I've got just the thing."_

* * *

A panel built into the thick door of Joe's Bar slid aside at the soft, insistent knocking on its exterior. Two dull eyes peered from the smoky innards of the bar, and rumbled, "What's th' password?" 

Ronnie trembled openly, almost unseating himself from his perch atop the telescoping stilts provided to them from Wade's bag of tricks. The long overcoat he wore to hide his false height shook with his fear. Ronnie thanked providence (and cursed both Wade and his own luck) for the bushy beard and dark glasses stuck to his face in the shadows of a wide-brimmed fedora. They hid the quake of his lips, and the nervous darting of his eyes, from the bouncer behind the door.

Dressed in an identical disguise, Kimmie reached into the pocket of her coat, just as Wade had instructed her to do. She pulled a rolled-up bill out, clasped between her fingers, and held it up to the slot. "Benjamin," she said with a smirk hidden behind her fake facial hair.

Meaty fingers reached through the slot and tore the bill from her, sucking it through the door. With the clank of its latch, the door swung open. The teens left a trail of displaced smoke in their wake as they slipped through, entering a whole new world.

_Kim, bless her stony little heart, stayed cucumber cool while we walked right into the big leagues. Me…well, I admit, I was a little nervous. But that wasn't about to stop me from taking charge and showing that murderous bunch who was boss._

Ronnie stumbled on his wobbly stilted legs into a crowd of the meanest people he had ever seen outside of a television set. They lurked around tables and milled by a circular bar, nursing drinks and angry looks. One of the latter turned on Ronnie when he tripped over his distant feet and fell against a muscular wall of back.

"You lookin' for trouble, Beardo?" snarled the thug. His eyes burned into Ronnie. The trembling teen couldn't help but imagine that the man was looking for good places to park his shank. "Beat it," the man told him, "Before I kill you 'til you're dead."

"Sure," Ronnie stammered, righting himself and backing away. "You're the boss." Then he yelped as Kimmie yanked him away by the elbow.

"Ron," she whispered through wriggling beard, "I need you to focus here, okay? This is serious. We need to keep a low profile, or we're dead." She ignored his stuttering response, looking through the haze in the bar. The faces of those unsavory characters choking the small building swam amongst themselves, making it difficult to pinpoint a single person. But after a moment of searching, Kimmie's eyes narrowed. "Got him. There, at the bar."

Ronnie spied their eye-patched fellow bellied up at the bar. The hilt of a knife rested in his grasp. Its blade flew between his fingers on the bar top in an impressive display of dexterous skill that made Ronnie want to applaud and empty his bladder at the same time. "Oh golly," deadpanned Ronnie, "Can I talk to him first? Please, oh please."

Kimmie just rolled her eyes and tugged down on the brim of her hat. "Just stay put and keep your eyes open, okay? Try to blend in."

"Blend in?" Ronnie called to her back as it disappeared into the crowd. "I'm wearing stilts, fake hair, a trench coat, and a hat that went out of style when movies went to color. Where am I gonna blend in? A Maltese Falcon convention?" Kimmie's eyes were the only ones around him that didn't turn and cow him with glares.

_Did Kim get the info out of that Patch guy? You'd better believe it. But don't ask me how a teenage girl got a known killer to talk. Maybe she sweet-talked him. Maybe she bluffed it out of him. Heck, maybe she did that Puppy Dog Pout thing. Lord knows that could get China to give up Tibet. Frankly, it doesn't matter. After all, this is my story, and Kim has plenty stories of her own. So pay attention, because this is where things get hairy._

"Blend in," snorted Ronnie as the bar returned to its previous, brutish activity. "I'd like to see her blend…hey, where'd she go?" His eyes searched the bar for his friend while his hand reached out, searching for a chair he could escape from his stilts onto. He found one and plopped down with a _whuf_, still looking about. Finally, he spotted her, taking the stool next to Patch as smoothly as her awkward disguise would allow. "Ah, there we go."

"Yes," a nasally voice crowed, "Our circle is now complete."

Ronnie's head snapped around, taking in the full table he had unwittingly joined. The bar's patrons were among the hardest and cruelest people he had ever seen, and the selection at his table made the rest of them seem tame by comparison. Ronnie had never seen so many scars, knives, gun, and sneers in one place, spread out in a circle that started and ended at him.

"Now, let us set to the task at hand," continued the speaker.

Ronnie examined the speaker with a double take. The sneering man wore a trench coat and fedora identical to Ronnie's. Dark circles rimmed his eyes beneath his hat, giving his gaze a rodent quality. Raven locks stuck to his sweaty, pale forehead, which he crinkled at the collection of criminals couched at the table. "Business?" gulped Ronnie.

The man spread his hands across the table wit ha sinister chuckle. "But of course. We all know why we're here."

"We do?" squeaked Ronnie. All eyes turned to him. "I mean, we do," he grunted in a painfully deep voice. "But, uh, why not explain it for this guy here?" He thumbed at the man to his left, a vicious Cro-Magnon with a ski cap. "He looks a little slow." The man rumbled at Ronnie, making the teen shrink further into his beard.

The speaker seemed pleased at the thought. "You, my malevolent, malodious minions, are here to join in Doctor Lipsky's glorious campaign for global conquest. You, the lieutenants of the Lipsky army, shall spread my message of terror across the glove in a revolution of anarchy, fear, and ultimate subjugation!"

"Dude, who's Doctor Lipsky?"

Ronnie's question deflated the man's drama and his chest. "What?" The man dropped his arms in the loss of his moment. "I am, I'm Doctor Lipsky. Isn't that…everyone knows that, right?" He rounded the table, stalking up to the shaking, wide-eyed Ronnie. "Say, I don't recognize you…"

The fake beard whipped left and right as Ronnie looked about in a panic. "Who, me? Uh, me, I'm…Dude, I'm, like, at the top of your list. Baddest of the bad." Bullets of sweat shot down Ronnie's brow, soaking his collar. "I, uh, kick puppies for fun in my free time."

Lipsky leaned in, taking detailed stock of Ronnie's faux features. Seconds dragged by for Ronnie beneath the villain's scrutiny. "That is evil," admitted Lipsky as he rubbed his jaw. With a glance at Ronnie's accoutrements, the like-garbed Lipsky added, "And you are a snappy dresser."

The man to Ronnie's left snorted. "'e's just some kid in a coat. Any idiot can see that."

Ronnie staggered to his feet, throwing his chair out behind him. "What? I do not have to stand here and take this. I'm better than this. I've got brunch with Doctor Doom tomorrow." He swiveled clumsily on his stilts to march off, but then swung back around to jab a finger in Lipsky's face. "And you, sir, will be hearing from my Union rep about this outrageous…outrage!"

That last breath of indignation blew the beard right off Ronnie's chin and slapped it into the villain's face. Thick, oily sweat made it cling to Lipsky's skin, where it twisted to mimic his dawning, horrified realization. "You…" he stammered. "You…"

Beardless, Ronnie backed away. "Oh, wow, uh…Gee. I gotta go."

His stilts betrayed his retreat, catching on the chair he had discarded behind him. Ronnie fell back with a wail, bowling himself into the middle of another table, and sending its patrons flying every which way. They crashed into others, who then crashed into others, until the entire bar dominoed into chaos.

Dirty looks became shoves. Then they degenerated into punches and kicks. Soon, people were flying across the room, their screams becoming lost in the deafening fray. Chairs crunched across backs and shoulders. Knives were unsheathed to determine the new pecking order of the bar. Broken beer bottles soon intervened on behalf of their owners, but only wound up making things worse.

Ronnie watched the storm rage from its eye, yet untouched by its brawling fury. A man twice his size soared over his head and smashed into a table, flattening it with an explosion of splinters. Ronnie crouched and covered his ears, wincing as people and wreckage and glass crashed all around him. A distant voice rose above the din, calling out for Kim. He didn't realize it was his until the voice stopped short when Lipsky yanked him off his feet by his lapels.

Their faces hovered eye-to-eye. Ronnie got a good look at the pasty features of his aggressor, and he couldn't help but wince in sympathy; a long, nasty cut ran from the edge of Lipsky's eye down his cheek, smeared with red and twisted with fury. "You've foiled my campaign before it can even start, boy. And look what you've done to my face," snarled Lipsky. "Very clever, aren't you? But you didn't count on me surviving your trap, did you?"

"Trap?" shot Ronnie, as he wrestled his fear for control of his bladder. "What trap? Who are you, anyway?" His toes dangled, wriggling in a desperate bid to regain a foothold on the ground and take flight out of this mess.

"No doubt you've concocted an escape plan as well," continued Lipsky, "But you fail to realize one thing." He jerked Ronnie closer, eliciting a yelp out of the teen. Now their noses touched, giving Ronnie no place to hide from Lipsky's hatred. "I know what you look like. I've committed your very likeness into my memory. Burned it there! And know now, that no matter where you go, or how long it takes, you shall feel the sting of Doctor Lipsky's revenge. I shall remember you until the stars are snuffed by the great…cosmic…snuffer-thing…" Struggling, he jerked Ronnie again, trying to reestablish the mood. "But regardless, if it takes me that long, I shall have my vengeance. I shall—"

The back of Lipsky's head suffered the splintering strike of a stilt as Kimmie high-kicked the ne'er-do-well clutching her friend. Ronnie barely had time to cry her name before she had hopped down from her remaining stilt and out of her jacket. She caught him as he fell, cradling him, and grunted with the excess weight in her arms. "C'mon," she said, "We're getting out of here."

Ronnie howled and clutched his face to her shoulders as Kimmie lowered her head and plowed through the barroom ruckus. Her speed and agility saw them through, keeping them from harm until they reached the blast door at the front. With a leap and a cry, Kimmie crashed through the door, kicking it off of inadequate hinges and landing atop the toppled hatch. None of the thugs behind them showed any interest in their escape, and continued exercising their rage on one another. They also missed the distant sound of sirens, though Kimmie heard them all too well, and hastened her sprint until they had reached the alley where they had begun.

Panting, Kimmie let Ronnie down to his feet, and then collapsed against her own knees, doubled over. She reached for the Kimmunicator, thumbing its switch as she drew it out of her pocket. "Wade?" she said between gasps. "Wade, are you there?"

_"Right here, Kim."_

She gave him a twisted grin. "I got it," she said. "I got everything we need. Calamitous has a lair up at the top of Mount Trinity."

Wade frowned, disbelieving. _"Just outside of town?"_

"You know any other mountains around?" Her grin didn't falter. "Set up an anonymous tip for Sergeant Preston. Let's let the police handle it from here." She clicked the channel closed and replaced the Kimmunicator in her pocket. Breath eluded her once more, this time out of excitement. "Oh my God, Ron. Oh my God! That was so awesome. I did it, I really did it!" Soft sniffling came as reply, tearing Kimmie's head from the clouds and turning it to her friend. "Ron?"

Ronnie crouched behind a garbage can with his legs drawn up to his chest. His face sat between his knees, muffling the short sobs he couldn't contain. The shake of his shoulders dislodged shards of glass and splinters of wood from his torn trench coat, littering the ground with souvenirs of the bar fight. "Oh, man," he moaned, clutching fistfuls of his straw hair. "Oh my God…"

Kimmie knelt down to him, reaching out with a hesitant hand. "Ron, are you…are you hurt?"

"…could've died, Kim," Ronnie whimpered. "Almost…they were everywhere, and they all had…" He couldn't even bring himself to look up at Kimmie. "Never again. I can't…I…never."

The exhilaration in Kimmie's face drained away, replaced with overwhelming guilt. She knelt down beside Ronnie and wrapped her arm around his shoulders. "It's okay," she said soothingly. "We're all right. We're okay. See?"

_See? Man, all I could see were the faces of every single one of those psychos from the bar. Any one of 'em could have gutted me without even blinking. I would have been dead, and for what? I didn't understand what was going on, and I didn't understand how Kim did, or why she would choose something like this. All I knew was, I had come closer to dying than I ever had before. Way more than when I thought I could fly off of my own roof. And it made the choice easy:_

"Never again," Ronnie said again. His head rose from his knees, staring at Kimmie with a mixture of anger and terror. "I won't ever do that again, Kim." Tears slicked the surface of his scowl, making it glisten beneath the street light. "You can't…that was…Never. I won't."

Kimmie blinked at the strength in his voice. Ronnie couldn't exactly blame her; his was a fun-loving outlook on life. But there had been no fun for him in the bar. Not like her. "Okay, Ron," said Kimmie, rubbing his hand as he wept his fear away. "We…we don't have to do anything like that again. Promise."

* * *

"…and we never did," Ron finished in a quiet voice. 

Silence followed the end of his tale, infecting the crowd that had doubled in size since he had started painting the scene. He took the opportunity to refill his punch and grab a handful of grapes. Only the sound of Kim's interview in the background saved the4 room from total stillness. That, and the muttered grumbles of Ron as he tried, and failed, to toss the grapes into his mouth.

"Wait…" Cooper exchanged glances with Rufus. Standing on the table, the naked mole rat could only shrug before he dived back into the whole pineapple he had been in the process of excavating. "Wait a minute. What?"

"Yeah," someone from Ron's crowd called out, "What are you talking about?"

"Kim's a worldwide hero," another person added.

Stabbing his finger at Ron, Cooper insisted, "You're full of it."

"Okay, okay," Ron said, raising his hands in defense. His last grape hung abandoned in the air, and bopped him atop his head when he turned away to appease his audience. "Man, haven't you people heard of dramatic license?"

"Ho, showoff," came the squeaking reply from the inside of a pineapple.

Ron shot Rufus a dirty look, and then faced his audience. "What I meant was, we didn't go heroing again until things really hit the fan."

"Well, what happened?" insisted Cooper. Complementary shouts of 'yeah,' and 'tell us' rang through the crowd. It seemed as though half the studio had shown up to hear Ron's tale, and they wouldn't accept this dénouement as a satisfactory ending. "C'mon, kid, don't leave us hanging. Did the cops move in on that Calamitous guy?"

Ron chuckled. "Did they ever."

"Back in a moment." Sunni grinned for the cameras. "But first, a word from our sponsors."


	3. Chapter the Third

**Kim Possible**  
**Lucky Number Seven**

_by Cyberwraith9_

* * *

"Miss Possible, you're a true modern marvel." Sunni's smile sparkled beneath the sweltering lights. Whereas Kim's radiant glow rapidly degenerated into commonplace sweat, the television veteran weathered the heat without dilemma, a fact that Kim could tell pleased Sunni to no end. "A hero, and adventurer, a daredevil, and a strong, independent woman, all rolled into one." She cracked that manufactured grin of hers and said, "Any advice for the women out there in the world, trying to make it from day to day?" 

Irritation tugged at the corner of Kim's face. Only her immense willpower kept her own, untested Hollywood smile intact. "Well, Sunni," Kim said, "My advice for 'everyone' out there is the same advice my father inspired me to live by: Anything is possible." She shattered the fourth wall with a pointed look into the cameras. "You have to believe in your dreams, and believe that, if you want it bad enough, it will happen."

Sunni didn't look convinced. "Sage, if a little tired. But c'mon; not all of us have rocket science and brain surgery swimming in our genes."

So that was it? Sunni wanted Kim to chalk up her success to her parents? Kim did nothing to hide the flash of ire breaching on her face. But another thought soon quelled it onto a serene smile.

"There is one piece of advice," admitted Kim. She paused, waiting until Sunni practically fell from the edge of her seat with faux anticipation. The audiences' posteriors perched at the precipice as well, eager to hear the one magical piece of advice that would change their lives forever. "In life," preached Kim, "There are always going to be people who tell you that you're not good enough. They'll do their best to convince you that your way is wrong, and their way is right. The world around you won't rest until it molds you into something it likes." With a twinkle in her eye, Kim said to her hooked crowd, "And that's why the hardest, smartest, bravest, and best thing you can do is this: Never be normal."

It took two whole minutes for the frenzied crowd to settle down. Sunni had to stand and wave her arms. Even the people waiting outside the studio window went nuts, waving and shouting and laughing. All the while, Kim indulged in self-satisfaction that sat like a cunning mask on her features.

"Goodness," gushed Sunni, fanning herself as she retook her seat. "I think there's a T-shirt somewhere in that one. That's quite the personal credo."

"It's not mine," Kim said sweetly, relishing in her plan's impending fruition. "It's Ron Stoppable's. My partner. He's the one your producer didn't want on the show."

Horror cracked Sunni's plastic face as her crowd began to boo. Calls of 'We want Don,' and 'Bring on that Stoppable chick!' rose above the din. Sunni's mouth flapped wordlessly. She tried calling for order, but her formerly adoring audience wouldn't hear her pleas. All the while, Kim basked in her handiwork, leaning back and crossing her legs. She twiddled her thumbs and grinned.

Ron watched Kim enjoy her anarchy through a black-and-white monitor set near the snack table. He could no longer see the stage directly; the size of Ron's personal crowd had grown to such as size as to block his view of Kim's interview. More grips gravitated at the crowd's perimeter, vying for a better spot among all the makeup crews, on-set writers, directors' assistants, rogue cameramen, and even other producers. They all offered their own boos on behalf of the center of their attention. Then they clamored for more, broadening the beam on Ron's face.

"Girl's got guts," noted Cooper with a nod in the colorless Kim's direction. "Nobody's ever turned Sheridan's own crowd against her before. This is a first."

The sidekick shrugged. "That's KP for you. She always had more guts than sense. And she's got a lot of sense."

Rufus nodded from Ron's shoulder, chittering incomprehensibly. His whiskers twitched with a small army of memories, all of which included Kim saving her boys' bacon with derring-do and a cool head. "Uh-huh, uh-huh," he squeaked.

Cooper slapped Ron on the opposite shoulder. The blow nearly unseated Rufus, and sent the mole rat squawking at the thoughtless grip. "Hey, c'mon," he said, as the teen rubbed his arm. "Don't cop out on us now. What happened next?"

"Yeah," one of the in-crowd producers shouted, "What did you and Kim do?"

* * *

_Well, like we figured, the police took to Wade's anonymous tip. Turns out they were more willing to listen to a stranger than to an eight-year-old. Go figure. Sergeant Preston assembled his best men to scout the base of Mount Trinity for the cave entrance of Calamitous' lair. As if there was a doubt; KP's intel was on the nose._

Storm clouds brewed at the snowy cap of Mount Trinity, casting shadow over the Tri-City summer. The dormant volcano stood watch over its three children from a respectful distance, a lone guardian rising above the smooth landscape. A venerable coat of dotted pines sat atop its hulking shoulders, and shoes of rocky rubble sat on its broad feet. Its presence, far from any mountain range or neighboring volcanic activity, had baffled geologists for decades. Some considered it to be a fluke of nature. Others thought it to be a miracle, and still others, an omen. A select few thought it was just a plot device to provide atmosphere, but they were discounted as delusional maniacs, and dismissed entirely. Regardless, the awe it inspired could not be denied.

_Now, me, I would'a been perfectly happy to just kick back after all that. Couple of kids tracking down a super villain's lair? Definitely time for cartoons and soda. But Kim, she just couldn't leave well enough alone. If she couldn't be a part of the action, she at least had to see it. For most people, that would mean catching it on the evening news. Kim…She had to have box seats._

Ronnie squeezed his eyes and clung to the rim of his seat. "I'm not gonna die," he murmured over and over again. Even with the headset strapped over his ears, he could barely hear himself over the roaring rhythm of the blades beating above their heads.

"Oh, Ron," an exasperated voice huffed through his headset, "Why can't you relax? We're perfectly safe."

The voice cracked Ronnie's eye open. Mount Trinity and its sprawling surroundings waited far below outside of the Plexiglas bubble that he, Kimmie, and their pilot inhabited. Eight thousand feet separated Ronnie's soles from terra firma. That distance remained steady thanks to the helicopter's rotors, a marvel of flight that Ronnie didn't trust in the least to keep them alive. "How did you talk me into this?" he wailed, and clamped down on his eyelids once more.

Seated between Ronnie and their pilot, Kimmie just smiled and shook her head. "You really are something, you know that?"

"Right now, I'd like to be something lower to the ground," he moaned. His eye cracked again when he felt something stirring from his cargo pocket. "Rufus," he cried, "Get away from that!"

Rufus stood atop the helicopter's instrumentation. His tiny body pressed up against the glass as he stared out at their dizzying altitude. He peeled his nose away to look back at Ronnie. "Ho-ho, cool!" he chattered. Then he moaned when Ronnie's hand snared him and brought him back to the relative safety of Ronnie's lap. "Mwah…"

Ignoring Ronnie's latest panic attack, Kimmie turned to their pilot. "Thanks again for taking us up here, Mister Earheart."

Emilio Earheart flipped his aviator shades up over his brow to offer the teen a wink. "Least I could do, Kim," came the reply via her headphones. "If you hadn't pulled me and my family from that fire, I wouldn't even be here." He glanced over at Ronnie, whose pallor faded more with each passing second. "Is he going to be okay?"

"He's fine." Kimmie tilted her head to the radio rig set up next to the controls. "Do you think we could tune into that frequency I gave you?"

"Sure." With a shrug, Emilio dialed in a seemingly meaningless series of numbers. "Listening for Britina's latest single, are we?" His condescending laugh cut short when clipped tones began speaking through their headsets in a strange play-by-play. "Kim?"

She shushed the pilot and listened intently. _"Preston to all units. Advance team is in position at the entrance. I'm seeing definite signs of development here. This is no ordinary cave."_

_"Sir, request permission to take point, sir,"_ another voice broke in.

The channel buzzed with Preston's sigh. _"Fine, Barkin. Take point. From here on out, maintain silence unless absolutely necessary."_

Tense minutes rolled by as the helicopter foursome listened to the policemen's whispered breathing, holding theirs unconsciously. Ronnie overcame his acrophobia enough to notice the jittering of Kimmie's leg, and the way her fists clenched and unclenched. Kimmie's bottom lip vanished behind her teeth.

He knew where she wanted to be…where she deserved to be. She had cracked the case. She was a natural, and they both knew it. And when Kimmie caught sight of his attention, and flashed him an empty smile, he knew why she wasn't. He couldn't help but feel a stab of guilt.

_"Wait,"_ barked Preston, breaking his own commandment. _"What's that?"_

_"We've been compromised,"_ Barkin bellowed. _"I'm engaging the enemy."_

_"Barkin, no! It's a giant to—"_

Once last scream crackled through the radio. Then, silence. A new voice entered the signal, calling fruitlessly for Preston to respond. Kimmie and Ronnie exchanged worried looks.

A sudden hiss of static broke the police jargon as the radio began to redial itself. Wade's voice broke the static once its numbers stopped spinning. _"Kim, are you hearing this?"_

Emilio tapped his headset. "Hello? Hello, who is this? Are you cleared for this channel?"

_"I hacked your radio. Kim, your police friend is in big trouble."  
_

"You hacked the radio?" Ronnie gaped at Kimmie, unnoticed. "Can he do—Can you do that?"

_"Big problems, Kim,"_ said Wade. _"I've hacked into Colonel Calamitous' security grid—"_

"Again with the hacking? Kim, this kid's a computer's worst nightmare!"

_"—and your police friend has been taken prisoner. The whole facility's gone into lockdown. Here, turn on your Kimmunicator."_ Kimmie did so after pulling it from her pocket. Confusing images flashed on its screen: The mouth of a cave, blocked off by a sheet of solid metal, with police on the outside pounding and shouting to be let in; endless corridors lined with laser cannon armatures where wall met ceiling; a line of disgruntled (but yet unharmed) prisoners being ushered into a large chamber by armed thugs; a dark silhouette, whose vile shadow broke only for a sinister smile and smoldering eyes. _"Calamitous has them."_

Kimmie's face darkened as Wade's image retook the screen. "What about the military? Anybody?"

A negative shook Wade's head. _"No good. They'd never get here in time. There's no one left."_

The spinning wheels in Kimmie's head must have drowned out Wade's nay saying. She pondered the mountain beneath them with a hard look that chilled Ronnie's blood. "A complex that big underground has to be ventilated, right?"

_"Sure."_

"Hero-sized?"

Wade blinked. _"But they're guarded—"_

"Not from someone already inside the security grid." Kimmie watched Wade's look shift from shock to awe, and then to excitement. Sausage fingers flew across his keyboard, bending and twisting code to his whim. Meanwhile, Kimmie began to root around the interior of the cockpit. "Find a good entrance. I'll be on the ground in a minute." She thumbed the Kimmunicator off, and then glanced back at Emilio. "Mister Earheart, do you keep parachutes in here?"

Emilio nearly looped the helicopter in surprise. "Are you insane? I am not letting you—"

"Never mind. I found them." Kimmie pulled a pack from beneath her seat and began latching it to her back. The chute's clasps and straps ordered themselves beneath her hands at once, as though she had been doing it for years. Within seconds, she stood at the hatch, fully ready to leap out into empty air.

Ronnie's hand gave her pause. He begged her with a look, and said, "Kim, don't do this. You're going to die." In a quiet voice, he added, "You promised."

He felt his heart breaking as Kimmie nodded solemnly. "Stay here," she told him. She turned away and scanned the ground far below. "When you guys get back, start calling everyone you can think of…except my parents," she amended quickly. "Just make sure…what are you doing?"

Kimmie's question came when she turned back and saw Ronnie tangled in the clutches of a second chute. He grumbled under his breath at the troublesome tentacles coiling around his body. "What's it look like," he shot with a glare. "I'm trying to kill myself." With a disgusted sigh, he looked down. "Can I get some help here?" Rufus skittered out from his pocket and worked his way around the chute's straps, tugging them into place and clasping them together with uncanny speed. "Thanks, pal."

"Ron," Kimmie said, "Don't. You don't have to do this. I don't want you getting hurt, or worse."

"Would you shut up?" said Ronnie. "I'm scared enough as it is." He exchanged worried looks with his naked mole rat. Rufus scrambled back into his pocket and tugged its flap closed, locking its clasp with a decisive click.

_Don't ask me why I put that death-blanket on my back. Even I don't know. Maybe I didn't want to see her go down alone. Or maybe I was scared to fly back without her. In the end, it doesn't really matter. I'm proud to say, I handled my first jump like a pro._

He ignored Kimmie's forlorn look and pushed past her, taking position at the door. The latch felt deathly cold against his clammy fingers. An ominous drumbeat thudded in his ears—his heartbeat. It nearly drowned out Emilio's shouted warning. Before their pilot could pull them away, Ronnie yanked on the latch. The door flew open, letting in a powerful suction that almost overpowered Ronnie's terrified death-grip. "Push me," he shouted.

Kimmie hollered back, "What?"

Ronnie couldn't tear his eyes away from the far-off ground. The height churned his stomach. "I'm too scared to jump. You have to—"

Surprising strength slammed into his shoulders, sending him sailing into the sky. The thin air beat down upon him from the blades. Land and sky blended together in an indistinguishable swirl of brown and blue. But Ronnie didn't have time to notice; all his attention went toward keeping his lungs stocked with enough air to fuel his screams.

After an eternity of falling, Ronnie felt a pair of hands latch onto his arm. He looked over and saw Kimmie hanging next to him, with a fluttering contrail of red flowing from her crown. She flashed her braces at him and shouted, "Brace yourself!" Ronnie didn't have time to take her advice before she reached over and yanked on his ripcord. Then she vanished beneath him as tremendous force yanked on his straps.

Ronnie's screaming continued all the way down while he twisted and wafted in the wind. He didn't dare open his eyes until he felt something slam up underneath him. Crumpling, Ronnie lost his breath, unable to move as a cloud of white nylon drifted down around him. His cried returned as he thrashed against the blank, enveloping world, tumbling in a losing battle. One forever later, the nylon prison shot up to reveal a sloped mountain landscape and a concerned face hovering over him.

"Are you okay?" Kimmie asked, tossing his chute aside.

He lay on his back, slowing his hyperventilation to something resembling normal breathing. "That sucked," he decided. Kimmie helped him to his feet and dusted the pine needles out of his hair, all while he kept complaining. "This is it. We save the day, and then that's it. Assuming we survive." He locked his eyes with hers, sobering his fearful features. "Promise."

"I promise," she said.

"Good." Checking his pocket, Ronnie made sure Rufus was okay. Other than a tiny wet spot (which Ronnie couldn't really blame him for), Rufus seemed fine. "So," said Ronnie with a deep breath, "Which way to certain doom?"

* * *

A gunmetal vent stood watch outside of the grand, opulent doors of the inner sanctum of Colonel Calamitous. Indigestion rumbled behind its teeth, intermittently joined by a shrill cry of pain or a body part slamming against its metallic esophagus. Then its face exploded out on the feet of two teens, falling with them to the ground. The clang of its impact rang out in warning before it spun to as top, silenced. 

Kimmie landed, cat-like, next to the heap of Ronnie groaning on the floor. The sanctum doors towered in front of them, weathering her challenging glare effortlessly. She brought the Kimmunicator up and opened its channel. "We're in, Wade. How are the doors coming?"

_"Gimmie a minute,"_ Wade answered. His keyboard chattered solicitously in the background. _"Looks like he's a little more careful with this entrance."_

Aches and pains protested Ronnie's ascent from the floor. He winced at the crack of his own joints, and half-listened to Kimmie talk back and forth with Wade. The rest of his focus went toward pondering the curious tremble beginning in the floor. He looked around the metal corridor as the tremble grew into a quake severe enough to give Kimmie pause. "What is that," Ronnie muttered, pushing down on the rising wave of anxiety in his throat.

He glanced at Kimmie. Her eyes saucered, and she shouted, "Watch out!" Ronnie started to ask, but Kimmie's tackle stole his breath. Good thing, too, or he would have screamed in her ear as a swirling vortex of blades and spikes roared through the spot where he had been. Kimmie's charge carried him away and backward, allowing him to see the entirety of the—

"Spinning Tops of Doom?" Ronnie watched a pair of the conical death machines begin to track them. Tasteful tile flew in the tops' wake, leaving long channels of destruction. Ronnie's face lit up at the sheer lunacy of the moment, jaw agape in awe at their eclectic design. "That is so cool!"

"Ron!"

He shrugged, chagrined. "Sorry. But it would be so cool if it wasn't gonna hurt us."

Kimmie leapt with Ronnie in her arms, rebounding off the wall. The tops could not turn fast enough to keep up, giving Kimmie time to dump her friend off as the destructive engines tore into the wall behind them. "Break right," she called to him.

"Are you breaking right?" huffed Ronnie as he sprinted from the metallic shards torn free from the wall. The tops had already turned, and were bearing back down on them as they ran down the field-sized corridor.

"Yes! Break right, now!"

Ronnie bolted right in tandem with Kimmie's left turn. Accordingly, the giant tops behind them split apart as well, chasing a teen. "You lied!" cried Ronnie.

"You're surprised?"

He thought about it for a few steps. "No, I guess not." One of his eyes lingered on Kimmie, while the other kept watch for anything that could trip him, thus ending his life beneath the deadly blades or the crushing tip of the enormous children's toy only a few steps behind him. The vortex washing off of its blades blew across the nape of his neck, hurrying his steps. "I thought Wade said he had security taken care of!"

"I thought I did," said Wade through the Kimmunicator. "I guess those top things are autonomous from the other systems. He must really like those doors."

"Speaking of which," interjected Kimmie. She had led her top to the end of the corridor. Her cheerleader legs carried her up the wall, where she leapt up and over the ten-foot top's spiked crown to the opposite side. The top crushed her launching wall and turned around, hot on her heels. "How about letting us at the bad guy, Wade?"

The ceaseless clack of his keyboard sped up. "Patience is a virtue," he said through clenched teeth and sweaty lips.

Ronnie juked out of the way of his pursuer, watching the ground in his wake turn to mulch beneath a storm of blades. "Screw your patience," shouted Ronnie.

"Ron," shouted Kimmie, "Run at me as fast as you can."

He ducked beneath a close call from a blade, rolling back the way he came with the top hot on his heels. Kimmie sprinted toward him at full tilt from the opposite end of the corridor. "Oh, come on. You really think that'll work?" Despite this, he put everything into his legs, and leaned into his sprint.

Kimmie didn't answer. She just ran as hard as she could, and Ronnie did the same. Endless seconds ticked by until Kimmie and Ronnie came together. She snared him by the waist and heaved, bowling them both over to one side. Just like she planned, the clumsy tops couldn't follow. They slammed into each other and exploded, torn apart by one another's fierce weaponry and power. Deadly debris flew across the broad corridor and imbedded itself into the first surface it found.

The two teens lay together on the ground, panting. They surveyed their handiwork. "You were saying?" quipped Kimmie as she stood.

Ronnie gingerly picked himself up around the shattered shard of blade buried in the floor between his legs, mere inches from having been the worst possible catastrophe. "I stand corrected," he deadpanned.

The sanctum doors cracked open in time with Wade's victorious shout through the Kimmunicator. _"Got it. Go. Go!"_

_We ran for those doors like there was no tomorrow, not knowing what waited beyond. Of course, with all the noise those tops made, it was no surprise that Calamitous knew we were coming. Everything we had seen and done until that point was kids' stuff compared with this. But I was ready. No villain, no matter how bad, could possibly—_

"Oh, come on!" Ronnie lingered outside the doors in fear while Kimmie charged ahead through the growing gap. "I'm your memory, and even I know you're full of it."

_Fine. I was terrified. Mortified. Horrified. All kinds of 'ide's. But I went in anyway, because that's where Kim went. Happy?_

"No," whimpered Ronnie, and followed in Kimmie's wake.

Like the corridor, Calamitous' inner sanctum stood in scales more suited for a giant. The cylindrical chamber sprawled out from the doors, empty and echoing, cradling its master and his prisoners in its center. An enormous engine of destruction sat to one side, its blue core pulsing, chasing shadows away with sapphire. Each captive policeman stood bound to a pillar with tight leather straps, watching helplessly as an armored figure cackled at the teens.

"Fools," cried the imposing figure cloaked in a crimson cape. "You dare challenge me in my sanctum sanctorum?" His armor bristled and swelled with a villainous laugh, gleaming green in the intermittent blue light. A helm split his face in half, but could not impede the dark scowl that turned their way. "You are quite bold indeed, my metallic malcontent."

Kimmie and Ronnie exchanged glances and shrugs. "Excuse me?" she asked.

Calamitous did a double take. He raised his visor and blinked at the children who had breached his lair. "Wait…you aren't the Steel Sentinel?" He sounded confused and disappointed.

"Um, not even close," Ronnie shot back. "And, who?"

""This is impossible!" bellowed Calamitous.

Kimmie grinned and struck a stance. "Nope. But you're pretty darn close." To Ronnie, she hissed, "Get everyone free and out of here. I'll distract him."

"But…" Kimmie was gone before Ronnie could finish. She caught Calamitous off-guard; he apparently hadn't expected a girl too young to drive to invade his base and attack him. The maneuver worked, buying Ronnie enough time to reach the policemen. He pulled Rufus out of his pocket and squeezed, compelling his pal to incisor his way through the leather bonds. "Don't worry, guys, I'll have you out in a jiffy."

"Bless your heart, kiddo," swooned Preston, rubbing his liberated wrists.

Barking seemed less appreciative, and more humiliated, as Ronnie and Rufus cut him free. "That's it," he muttered, "I quit. I'm going into something safer. This is just nuts."

"You guys get out of here," Ronnie said. "Kim's got it from here. You should get to safety."

Preston raised a bush brow at the teen. "You must be joking. I'm not going to leave two minors to fight an international criminal on—"

Calamitous' gauntlet crackled, belching a cloud of power. Kim's nimble agility carried her clear of the blast. It went wide, and struck Preston in the thigh. The old cop cried and fell to one knee, clutching his leg.

"Have a taste of my Pain Ray, fools!" crowed Calamitous. Another bolt sizzled through the air, tearing the tip of Kim's glorious ginger mane.

Ronnie examined Preston's phantom wound. "Pain Ray? Aw, that's weak."

Barkin slung Preston's arm across his broad shoulders and lifted the old cop, helping him toward the door along with the rest of the squad. "Get out of here, son," Preston called back. "Run!"

Ronnie backed away, once again returning to reality, where he remembered how afraid he was. He turned back to Kimmie's battle with Calamitous, only to find that he had missed most of it. With one last sweep of her leg, she set the armored oaf flat on his back. Calamitous rattled like a broker dryer full of cans, and then fell still.

Ronnie watched Kimmie stare at her beaten bad guy for a good, long minute in the intermittent blue light from Calamitous' doomsday device. Her features were hauntingly empty, as though she had lost something in the fight, and was searching for it somewhere in the villain's masking helm. Ronnie approached slowly, splitting his worry between her and the downed Calamitous. "KP?" He reached for her. "KP, are you okay?"

"Ron!" Kimmie jumped at his touch and jumped, gasping. She looked back at Calamitous, and then rubbed at her eye. "Oh. Oh, um…" A glistening streak trailed behind her fist when she swiped it across her cheek and sniffed. "Wow."

"Are you—"

"I have to…have to disable the doomsday…thing." She held up the Kimmunicator with a shaking hand. "Wade's gonna walk me through it. Are you ready, Wade?"

Wade's tiny image gave them a thumbs-up. _"With you, Kim."_

Kimmie nodded. Then she patted her pockets, sniffing again. "I, uh…I don't have anything to cut wires with," she discovered aloud, smiling shakily.

Ronnie pulled a cowering Rufus from his pocket. The bubble-gum rodent quivered in his palm, which he offered to Kimmie. "Here," he said quietly. "Rufus can chew through just about anything."

An empty laugh echoed from Kimmie's mouth. "Gross," she muttered with a smile, taking Rufus in hand. "Just be a minute," she murmured. With uncertain legs, she trudged to Calamitous' glowing column of ambiguous doom. Ronnie watched her go, wishing he could impart some words of encouragement, but his voice wouldn't work. That's when he caught a metallic glint out of the corner of his eye, and saw the gun.

* * *

"Wait." Cooper frowned and rubbed his brow, using brain cells lax from inactivity to ponder the situation. "A gun?" 

"Whoever heard of a super villain with a gun?" someone from the crowd shouted.

A third voice added, "I think he's makin' this up."

Ron poured himself a cup of coffee while the accusations built up, allowing his crowd to work their disbelief out on his inattentive ears. Truthfully, he had a hard time believing it himself. Super villains had ray guns, and killer mutated animals, and Spinning Tops of Doom. They didn't carry nine-mils, and certainly weren't known for busting caps of any kind. "I know," he said as soon as they had settled. "Believe me, at thirteen, I had a hard time believing it myself. But there he was, back on his feet, and pointing a gun at Kim's head."

"He's making this up," said the voice from the crowd again. "Kim Possible ain't scared of nothin'."

Ron's brows dipped. He tried to find the source of the voice in the crowd, but it had become too thick with hanger-ons and new (probably fair-weather, he figured) fans. "You people haven't heard a word I said," groused Ron. "When you look at Kim Possible, all you see is the girl who can beat a barrelful of ninjas, and catch bullets with her hands, and program a VCR in eight different languages. When I look at her…" His voice quelled, drained of its anger as he thought back to happier days, before adventuring became the alpha and omega of his friendship with Kim. "I see the girl I used to get ice cream with. I see the girl who put band-aids on my knees when I fell off my bike…and I fell a lot. But she was always there to pick me up. Not because she's a hero, but because she's an amazing person."

A giant hand enveloped his shoulders, easing the sharp ache in his chest. "Gotta admit, kid," said Cooper quietly, "It's hard to picture that girl scared."

Chuckling reasserted the smile on Ron's face. "This was Kim's first fight, and it was with a dude twice her size, wearing Doctor Doom armor. That's enough to freak anyone, even rookie Kim."

"But she got the gun away from Calamitous, didn't she?" A new voice arose from the crowd, feminine and vaguely familiar. "I mean, she didn't get shot, right?"

Ron shook his head. "Kim was too busy disabling Calamitous' whatcha-ma-whoosit. Didn't see him, or the gun."

"So what happened?" the voice called back.

His eyes grew distant. "I made a choice."

* * *

"Goodbye, child," growled Calamitous, resting his sights square on Kimmie's shimmering red hair. 

Ronnie had no idea what he was doing. He felt the wind whistling in his ears as some force barreled his body toward the armored thug and launched him into the air. It was as if he was watching it all happen from outside his body, which had latched onto Calamitous' weaponed arm. His teeth found purchase in Calamitous' gloved thumb. Blood spilled across his lips in tandem with the villain's howl, and the clatter of the gun hitting the floor somewhere in the distance. His tiny hands beat upon the larger man's arm and chest. His willowy legs kicked at impervious armor.

Calamitous tore Ronnie free of his arm, losing a good chunk of the skin from his thumb in the process. His hand wrapped around Ronnie's twiggy throat, holding him aloft and choking the life from him. Ronnie's bugging eyes stared into the red scowl of Calamitous' helm. A dark smile spread beneath the rim of its visor. "You've sealed your fate, fool," the smile sneered.

"Get off of him!"

A foot crushed Calamitous' visor into his nose, creating a cracked cradle for Kimie to land atop as her flying kick brought her back to earth. Ronnie fell free from Calamitous' limp grasp as the villain crumpled to the ground, wearing Kimmie on his face. She hopped off and rushed to Ronnie's side, babbling a mile a minute.

"Oh my gosh, Ron! Oh my gosh!" She yanked him to his feet with one hand, using her other to shake Rufus gleefully. "We did it. We did it!" Once Ronnie stood, she swept the mole rat into a crushing hug. "Oh, Rufus, you were awesome." Then she quickly pawned him off on Ronnie, adding, "But you're still kinda gross. Ron, that was so…I'm just…" She stopped. "Ron?"

Ronnie barely registered either her or Rufus. "Huh? What's up?"

"…Ron, are you okay?"

"Yeah," Ronnie whispered, staring off into space. "I'm fine."

Kimmie took Ronnie's hand. "Ron, it's okay. This is the last time, okay? You don't ever have to do this with me again." The vow earned her a horrified look from Ronnie.

_I realized then and there that asking Kim to give this up was selfish of me. Making her live the life of a normal teen would be like condemning her to a slow death, killing off everything that made her so special. I wanted to keep her in my world, but she had just discovered a new one, one that I couldn't possibly compete with. But she had come so close to dying…if I hadn't… And now she was saying that I didn't have to…_

_But I did._

Ronnie's horror changed to delight with unnatural speed. "That was so cool, KP!" he crowed. He grabbed her hands and swung her around, laughing in delight. "You were awesome. And that was awesome! I can't believe we just totally saved the day."

She gave him a quizzical look as their grasp broke. "Really?" she said, eyeballing his joyous laughter.

All but Ronnie's eyes expunged the haunting fear he felt, and plunged it deep into his heart, where it could fester beyond Kimmie's notice. "Absolutely," he lied.

* * *

"So that's it," murmured Cooper, while Ron sipped at his coffee. Like the rest of the crowd, he looked at Ron in a whole new light. "You do this to protect her." 

Ron took a long breath. "I'm crap at the hero game, that's no big secret. And I'd rather be doing almost anything besides dodging pot shots from the psycho de jour. And being laughed at, and losing my pants, and being digitized, and blown up, and dropped, and beat up, is no real treat, either." That faraway look returned to his eyes, sobering the depreciating smile on his features. "But if I can make sure Kim gets home okay, then nothing else matters. I don't care how many times I get laughed at, or pantsed, or digitized, or exploded, or dropped, or beaten. She's all that counts." Quiet reverence spread through the throng on murmured snatches of praise. Ron just shrugged, not knowing what to make of the attention. He did know that it couldn't possibly last.

"So you never told Kim about any of this?" Cooper still didn't sound quite convinced. An odd smile hovered on his fat lips, and surreptitious glances tore his eyes from Ron. "She doesn't know about…?"

He shook his head. "No reason to. Kim stays safe, and I get to keep my best friend. Why tell her when it'll just upset her?" He took another sip of coffee.

"You tell me, kid."

Cooper nodded back toward the crowd. The people parted, revealing a camera perched on a crew member's shoulder, its lens fixated on Ron. A pair of women flanked the camera, the identities of which made Ron spray his coffee into a cloud of disbelief. "Kim?"

Kim took tentative steps forward. Tears rimmed the bottoms of her eyes, escaping every so often to paint an emotional trail down her smiling cheeks. At her side, Sunni stepped forward and pivoted, facing the camera as she backpedaled toward Ron. "We're here behind the scenes of Cappuccino Chatter," she said into her portable mike, "Where we've just heard an amazing tale from one Ron Stoppable, an unsung hero who's getting his dues here in a world premiere."

"KP?" Ron gaped as Kim strode forward, allowed to pass by a reverent crowd and take Ron's hands in her own. Her shimmering gaze met his, saying a thousand things at once. "That's right," she said in a cracking voice, turning back to the camera to add, "His long over-dues," before planting a kiss on his cheek.

A blush spread through Ron's face from the point of her kiss. "Aw, I'm not…I didn't…"

"Ron," said Sunni, wedging her mike between them, "You silly boy. You're giving our backstage crew a sneak peek of your own interview, I see."

"My what?"

"Of course," said Sunni. An almost imperceptible dirty look flashed in Kim's direction, broadening the hero's smile. "I mean, look; we missed the beginning of your story. Would you mind telling it again?"

Shouts of encouragement rang out from the audience, egged on by Sunni's pumping fist. But Ron didn't hear a single one. All he cared about was the warm hand that slid down into his and intertwined with his fingers. Kim's green gaze flashed in his direction, luminous, loving, giving him strength enough to lift a mountain, and light enough to fly. She was all that mattered.

"I'd love to," said Ron, tearing the mike away from a surprised and indignant Sunni. Her ire grew as he wrapped an arm each around Sunni and Kim, drawing them in as he said, "Gather 'round, my plastic-surgery pretty, and I'll regale you with a tale of heroics and heart."

"Don't touch me."

**The End**


End file.
